I've admired White Snake Project for a really long time - they are an awesome opera company! They do exclusively new works that are heavily integrated with social activism. So, I was super excited when they selected me as one of the composers for their project "Sing Out Strong: Essential Voices." They paired poems from essential workers with composers like myself to create these pieces to elevate the voices of those people on the front lines - I mean service industry workers, healthcare professionals, grocery store workers, delivery workers.

My piece follows the story of Chiruza Muhimuzi. He's 21 years old, he's from the Congo, he came to Boston (he's there right now) studying and working at a grocery store. In his poem, he talks about the worry and the anxiety as he has no choice but to go out into the world during this pandemic to work. The opening of the piece is just him listing off all of the places he needs to go that day in a pretty casual way, but underneath it is this incessant fear. His roommates, who are father and son, actually ended up catching COVID, and there is a death, and his family - they call him every dayto check up on him 'cause the news of the virus is just, it's getting worse and worse.

Compositionally, I'm trying to convey this in a couple of different ways. I'm using two pitch cells - one is a 12-tone row that represents sort of the underlying anxiety, and another is a tone row derived from the scientific name SARS-CoV-2. I use these more atonal cells in the context of a more tonal harmony, creating a juxtaposition between going about your business, but also being super anxious and super worried about the virus that is literally everywhere. For example, in the first part of the piece, the singer is just singing this really simple pentatonic melody, but then underneath it, the cello starts to creep in with the "anxiety" tone row, which then transforms into the "COVID" tone row. Meanwhile, the piano is playing these really high chords and also this really low pedal tone, both in two different keys, kind of accentuating the war of information about the virus in America, at least.

Honestly, the biggest challenge for me with this piece was just feeling like I was doing the text justice. And, you just have to be careful with sung language, because it can so easily make things sound kind of cheesy, you know? Chiruza's story is - the last thing I want to do is novelize it. I want to respect it, and I want to try, at least, to elevate it. That's part of the reason I went with this, sort of, bi-tri-tonal approach, because I feel like it offers a kind of realism to this telling of the story.

I just want people to understand, and to be grateful for, the risks that essential workers are taking for us. That's really it. These are real people - disproportionately poor people, and people of color - and they're out there risking their lives for those of us who are lucky enough to be able to work from home, and to be able to socially distance. I really just want people to respect that and to take the proper personal precautions to slow the spread of coronavirus - wear a mask, stay home if you can, and if you can't, just try your best to be socially distanced.

The concert is happening Saturday, December 19th. It's totally free to attend, open to the public. You just have to register online at the link they're going to send you with this video. I hope you can stop by to support our essential workers and to support the artists who are doing this kind of work.

Thanks so much for listening, and I hope to see you soon!

We hope you'll join us tonight at 9pm ET for our next collaborative concert with Zen Duo. In the meantime, read on to learn about MCI composer Eddie Jonathan Garcia Borbon's piece "Math.Random(ZenDuo)," one of 5 works that will be premiered.

Describe your inspiration for composing the piece.
Math.Random(ZenDuo) was born from the interest in exploring different forms of notation using technology and the Internet. This work is strongly inspired by the work of John Cage, specifically the work Music of Changes, and works that make use of modular graphic scores such as Bird Gong Game. Taking advantage of the possibilities offered by technology, connectivity and the digital world, I intend, then, to unite the pseudo-hazardous nature of the random function with graphic score modules that suggest musical and sound gestures to the performer.

What is the overall conception for the piece (for example, is it programmatic or abstract? Is there a specific formal structure, color, or musical device you employed?)
It is an abstract work, structured in 3 great moments where the rhythmic density increases from a smooth texture to a granulated texture. The support of the "score" was developed in HTML and uploaded to an internet domain, which anyone can consult by accessing the link.

[[To view the "scores" Borbon is referring to, please visit here and here.]]

What are some of the goals you strove to accomplish in writing the work?
The objective was to program a dynamic and changing score that would show some modules which suggest some musical gestures to the performer. These modules were created, debugged and selected by me before the development of the dynamic score in HTML.

What are some of the challenges you faced in writing the work?
The biggest challenge I have faced when creating the work is to have it played. The ensembles, musicians, and performers are not used to these ideas (is it surprising?), but in the 21st century, in the middle of a pandemic where everything is virtual now, many are afraid or not comfortable facing something slightly different. Although I know that it is not the most revealing work, it is really something very simple.

​For you, as a composer, what has been the most beneficial and rewarding part of your collaborative process with Zen Duo?
Belonging to MCI, and being able to collaborate with this excellent Zen Duo ensemble, contributes to my career as a composer to a great extent. I am very grateful to MCI and Zen Duo for allowing my ideas to sound and become tangible. It is highly rewarding and I am very pleased about this.

Hello everyone,

This is Josh Trentadue, the current President of the Millennium Composers Initiative. We hope that all of you are continuing to do well and that you are staying safe and healthy throughout these troubling times.

As you know, MCI was founded by me and Duncan Petersen-Jones back in 2018. The two of us created this initiative as an opportunity for young composers at the beginning of their professional careers to continue to seek out new artistic endeavors, build upon and expand their growing professional network, and foster creative collaborations with other artists in the greater community. With the devastating impact and continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, MCI has been hard at work over the past few months to develop new and exciting opportunities for our members in an ever-changing environment. In the near future, we will be discussing in greater detail some of the events we have planned with the incredible artists we are collaborating with.

In the meantime, we have some announcements to make about structural changes that will be made to this initiative, effective immediately:

Board member Duncan Petersen-Jones has needed to resign from his positions as Vice President and Treasurer. Duncan’s incredible contributions to this initiative have made a positive impact to the growth and vitality that MCI has seen since its inception. The board and I are immensely grateful to Duncan for the passion, work, and creativity that he has brought to these positions, and to MCI as a whole. We are looking forward to seeing where his compositional career will go next as he continues to remain a member of this group.

While I continue to fulfill my duties as President of this initiative, board member Kevin Day will be assuming the duties and responsibilities of Vice President. Board member Helen He will primarily be taking over as our Marketing Manager, and board member Harrison J. Collins will be taking over as our Communications Manager.

I am proud of how far MCI has come since its inception and look forward to seeing the continued growth and development of this initiative, including for each and every one of our members' continuing artistic careers.

Sincerely,
Josh Trentadue
​[President, MCI]

The next Composer Spotlight for the Biennial 2020 NASA conference at Arizona State University features MCI composer Kevin Day! Day will be having TWO premieres of new works at this weekend's conference, both of which will be taking place on Sunday, March 8.

​The first of these premieres is a new work titled More than words..., composed for saxophone octet, double bass, piano, and narrator. The piece was commissioned by Dr. Connie Frigo, Associate Professor of Saxophone at the University of Georgia-Athens for the UGA Saxophone Studio. This group will premiere the piece at 3:20pm in Katzin Concert Hall - Day will be performing with them on piano for this event.
The composer writes the following: "These are my observations as a young American, and as a young citizen of the world."

The second premiere is for the first movement of a new sonata for alto saxophone and piano titled Unquiet Waters. The piece was commissioned by Dr. Jordan VanHemert, Assistant Professor of Saxophone and Jazz Studies at Hope College, who will give the world premiere of the entire work later this year. The first movement, fast, turbulent, was selected as the winner of the 2020 NASA Composition Competition and will be premiered by Dr. Nicki Roman (Assistant Professor of Saxophone, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and Casey Dierlam Tse at 7:30pm in Katzin Concert Hall.

Be sure to attend both of these events if you will be at the conference!!

The next Composer Spotlight for the upcoming Biennial 2020 NASA Conference at Arizona State University features the music of MCI composer Josh Trentadue. Last year, Trentadue was commissioned to write a new work for tenor saxophone and piano that would be meant to showcase a variety of the instrument's capabilities. Trentadue writes the following program notes about his new piece titled Excursions:

"​Excursions is a fun and mostly light-hearted work which showcases the idiomatic, technical, and lyrical capabilities of the tenor saxophone. The piece is inspired by the variety of different landscapes that comprise the geography of the United States. Embarking on a musical road trip of sorts, each of the relatively short four movements (all of which are played without pause) conjures up imagery of a particular geographical landscape. The tenor saxophone begins predominantly within a state of introversion while the piano starts to lead this journey. However, throughout the piece, the tenor saxophone continues to emerge in a necessary and important role equal to the piano as the piano gradually transitions to a more accompanimental role.

The four movements which comprise this work are as follows:

I. Twilit Woods - a beautiful setting of a forest at night bathed in moonlight. There is a sense of magic and mystery ever present.
II. Jagged Peaks - roads that twist and turn in every direction through sharp mountains and steep canyons. Unpredictable rhythms and tall harmonies give way to lyrical passages that search for the route leading away from this chaos.
III. Verdant Meadows - a majestic view of the mountains and canyons left behind leads into a pastoral depicting the peace, tranquility, and celebration of rural fields and green pastures.
IV. Ocean Coastlines - an adventurous trip on the shores of the ocean at its stormiest times. The vibrant thrills of the sea are matched with unpredictable and dangerous hazards of weather and nature at full force.

My sincerest thanks and appreciation to Ben MacDonald and Matthew Hartson for commissioning this piece and granting me the opportunity to write this music for them."

Excursions will be available for purchase after its world premiere by Ben MacDonald (tenor saxophone) and Casey Dierlam Tse (piano) on Monday, March 9 at 10:20am in Katzin Concert Hall. You can hear a preview of the piece below.

EVENT INFO: https://www.saxophonealliance.org/conference-presenters.asp?action=view&ProposalID=1
PIECE INFO: ​https://www.joshtrentadue.com/excursions-2020-tenor-saxpno.html

Our next Composer Spotlight for the upcoming Biennial 2020 NASA Conference features the music of MCI composer Harrison J. Collins. Last year, Collins composed a new work for saxophone ensemble that is inspired by the nighttime wonders of the cities he has lived in and visited. The composer writes the following program notes about Electric City:

"​Electric City is, first and foremost, inspired by the colorful, glowing, metropolitan beauty of the big city at night. For me, this city is Dallas, Texas, a place that is quite close to my hometown and that I have seen and been to frequently. I am always in awe of both the visually pleasing colors of the night city as well as the powerful sense of vitality and life, and as I am frequently in Dallas to hear concerts performed by the Dallas Winds, I have grown to have a strong musical association with this night-life aesthetic. When Dr. Paul Nolen, the saxophone professor at Illinois State University, asked me to compose a work for the ISU Saxophone Studio, I had been particularly missing my home, and so I chose to act on my yearning and write Electric City as an ode to the beauty of Dallas at night.

Musically, the work is informed by both classical and non-classical music that I listen to, and particularly by one of my favorite songs, M83’s “Midnight City”. Inspired by the vividly descriptive lyrics of that song, Electric City can be heard as joyride through a big city that passes through sparkling lights and reflective skyscrapers in the dark of night, accelerating until a final gear shift sends us blazing into the darkness with the glow of the city behind us."


Electric City is now available to purchase through Murphy Music Press and will receive its world premiere during this year's NASA conference by the Illinois State University Saxophone Ensemble on Saturday, March 7th at 10:40am in Nelson Fine Arts Center Plaza. You can hear a preview audio realization of the piece below.

EVENT INFO: https://www.saxophonealliance.org/conference-presenters.asp?action=view&ProposalID=529
PIECE INFO: https://harrisonjcollins.squarespace.com/electric-city
PURCHASE: http://murphymusicpress.com/products/c-176

From March 6-9, the Biennial NASA 2020 Conference will be taking place at Arizona State University. We are excited to begin sharing with you the Composer Spotlights for our MCI members who will be represented during this conference.

Learn more about Conner Leigh Shaw's piece "ExoResonant" for alto saxophone and electronics below! This piece will be premiered by Daniel Phipps on Sunday, March 8 at 10:20am in Ravenscroft.

EVENT INFO: https://www.saxophonealliance.org/conference-presenters.asp?action=view&ProposalID=424

The final Composer Spotlight for our appearance at this year's Midwest Clinic conference features MCI composer Kevin Day! Kevin's work for wind ensemble, Havana, will be performed by the Clements High School Symphonic Band as part of their concert on Friday, December 20 from 6:15pm-7:15pm in Skyline Ballroom W375AB.
In addition, an arrangement of Day's chart Windy City (arranged for big band by MCI composer Josh Trentadue) will be featured during the Jazz New Music Reading Session on Friday, December 20 from 10:30am-11:30am at Ballroom W196.

VIEW OUR COMPOSER SPOTLIGHT FOR JOSH TRENTADUE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HIS ARRANGEMENT OF WINDY CITY

Be sure to check out this performance and the other events featuring music written by our MCI composers! In addition, you can also stop by Booth 2008 in the exhibition hall to meet 10 of our members and learn more about our initiative!

​
The composer writes the following about Havana:

"Havana was a wind ensemble piece that I started working on in 2017, got about 30 measures into writing, and then put on the shelf. I couldn't think of what to do with it or come up with an idea, so I ended up just putting it aside until I could. I ended up forgetting about it and while I was searching through my music files one night in September 2018, I stumbled on this work and found inspiration to write on what I had. I wanted to tell a story with the piece and make it authentic, and so I spent a lot of time carefully writing the work. After messing with a few titles and feeling a good amount of frustration, I decided to go with Havana, despite there being a viral pop song already in existence with the same name (a song that is honestly a guilty pleasure of mine to listen to). This piece, however, has nothing to do with the Camilla Cabrello mega-hit.

Havana (For Wind Ensemble) is a 7.5-minute work that is heavily influenced by Cuban music, rhythms, and percussion. I wanted to highlight different dance genres such as the Salsa, Mambo, and Cha-Cha, while also making the piece in my own voice. I have a strong love for Latin music and so this was incredibly fun to write. I sought to paint a mental image of the city of Havana, this beautiful landscape, and the culture that it is known and beloved for. There are many "Latin-influenced" pieces for band already and so I wanted to make Havana stand out as one that is exciting and memorable. I hope that performers and audiences will tap their foot, bop their heads, and feel the music."

--program notes by the composer

Havana is published through Murphy Music Press and can be purchased here. We look forward to hearing the Clements HS Symphonic Band's performance of this work!

The next Composer Spotlight for the 2019 Midwest Clinic conference features MCI composer Chris Evan Hass! His piece Volcanic Ash (2017) will be performed by the Donald Sinta Saxophone Quartet as part of their concert, scheduled to take place on Friday, December 20 from 12-1pm at Ballroom W190. Be sure to check out this performance and the other events featuring music written by our MCI composers! In addition, you can also stop by Booth 2008 in the exhibition hall to meet 10 of our members and learn more about our initiative!

The composer writes the following about the piece (program notes taken from his website):

"Volcanic Ash is a boisterous and lively piece for saxophone quartet, fusing the harmonic language of Middle Eastern music with the form, rhythms, and overall intensity found in heavy metal. The piece features constant meter changes, low open fifth ‘power chords’, and sweeping arpeggios, but is complemented by a calm and reflective chorale.
Volcanic Ash was written for Donald Sinta Quartet’s Composition Competition in 2017, taking Dan Graser’s advice of writing a quartet that is 'harder, faster, and louder' than my first saxophone quartet, Polar Vortex, in an attempt to challenge the incredibly talented ensemble."

Volcanic Ash is published through Murphy Music Press and can be purchased here. We look forward to hearing the Donald Sinta Quartet's performance of this work!

We are excited to share with you the recordings from our collaborative concert with Front Porch! This event (titled "Six Climate Visions") featured the premieres of new music written by five of our MCI composers - Duncan Petersen-Jones, Eddie Jonathan Garcia Borbon, Isaac Mayhew, Ali Balighi, and Conner Leigh Shaw. Front Porch is, from their website, "a mixed quartet that invites audiences to engage personally with music by passionate, youthful voices, reimagining the classical concert experience with warmth and love as its foundation. Feeling equally at home with opera singers, composers, folk artists, and everyone in between, Front Porch is committed to exploring the expressive possibilities of its uncommon configuration of violin, bassoon, piano, and percussion."

​Check out the recordings below! This post will be updated as more of them are published.

VIDEOS:

Starting today, we will be highlighting the 2019 Midwest Clinic events featuring music written by our MCI composers! If you are attending the conference this year, be sure to check out each of these performances! In addition, you can also stop by Booth 2008 in the exhibition hall to meet 10 of our members and learn more about our initiative!

First up is a new work for concert band by MCI composer JaRod Hall. Hall's composition Lost Woods Fantasy (2019) will be performed by the Berkner High School Symphonic Band I as part of their concert, scheduled to take place on Wednesday, December 18, from 3-4pm in Skyline Ballroom W375AB.


Lost Woods Fantasy is published through FJH Music, who writes the following:

"This unique work follows a young group of friends in search of adventure in a nearby forest late at night. Once inside, the trees around them begin to stretch and seal off the entrance. Trapped inside, they must find a way out..."

-FJH Music

​We are looking forward to hearing the Berkner High School Symphonic Band's performance of Lost Woods Fantasy next week!

Our final Composer Spotlight for our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Eddie Jonathan Garcia Borbon. The concert is TONIGHT at 8pm EST at McIntosh Theatre, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI - you can livestream this special event here: https://smtd.umich.edu/performances-events/live-stream-mcintosh/?fbclid=IwAR08hnAtD2f8jes2yj31PZLYSX_e0Bl6l74vdnVRIlSFJQyxsCFTMXLDszA

Each of the five composers who will be featured in this event were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. Borbon's piece addresses the presence of air pollution in Colombia:

Describe your inspiration for composing the piece.
The inspiration for this work was the air pollution present in Bogotá - Colombia. According to the analyzes carried out by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, air pollution in Colombia is one of the environmental problems of greatest concern for Colombians. This is due to the impacts it generates in both health and the environment, and it is also the third factor social cost generator after water pollution and natural disasters.

In accordance with the provisions of Title 5 of Decree 1076 of 2015 and adjusting the definition, Atmospheric Pollution is "the phenomenon of accumulation or concentration of pollutants, understood as physical phenomena or substances or elements in solid, liquid or gaseous state, causing adverse effects on the environment, renewable natural resources and human health that alone, or in combination, or as reaction products, are emitted into the air as a result of human activities, natural causes, or a combination of these."

The MinAmbiente establishes with Resolution 610 of 2010 the maximum permissible levels of the following criteria pollutants: Particulate Material (PM10 and PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), tropospheric ozone (O3) and monoxide of carbon (CO), as well as the maximum permissible levels for six (6) unconventional pollutants with carcinogenic effects.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Colombia is the second country in Latin America with more air pollution, with an average of 19,000 deaths annually throughout the territory. Bogotá, the capital, records a value of 15 PM2.5 of exposure (amount of tuxedo it produces). The pollution of the air that is in the environment is produced by different factors that affect the atmospheric layer, increasing the great variety of polluting sources that modify the natural layer and all the components that are in it.

What is the overall conception for the piece (for example, is it programmatic or abstract? Is there a specific formal structure, color, or musical device you employed?)
This is an abstract work which deals with the harmful effects of air pollution in Colombia.

What are some of the goals you strove to accomplish in writing the work?
I wanted to use in every instrument of this unique ensemble some of their extended techniques, and from there, explore the relationships created with these techniques in a manner that ties into the overall theme of this work.

Is there anything specific about your piece you'd like your audience to look out for?
The importance of fighting for the environment, and specifically against air pollution

The next Composer Spotlight of our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Ali Balighi. Balighi's piece Daramad brings to life traditional Persian music, including a popular traditional song.

The composer writes the following:
​

"Daramad" in Persian means the starting of music, the moment when every performer would be ready to play. This music is made by a member of a traditional group and it describes the mode of concerts in traditional styles; however, nowadays neither traditional musicians nor younger players use this form in their current repertoires.

My piece Daramad was composed according to an old Persian music Be Soye To. This song is a famous piece which was written by Majid Vafadar in Dashti mode. Simple structure, melody, harmony, and the profound atmosphere this song creates inspired me to write my piece in a manner different from my usual practices. I believe that form, as an important aspect of music, is truly made during the compositional process. Form is also an abstract concept that should be created from a new perspective in every contemporary piece. Moreover, the use of older and traditional materials is a good way to describe new scenes. Audiences who have some understanding of these aspects of music and composition can follow these new ideas when used in a new piece.

Composing for a new ensemble which I do not have enough experience writing for was my biggest challenge. However, Front Porch, as a professional ensemble, helped me to search for new and artistically fulfilling ways of self-expression.
All in all, for this piece will be played in the United States, I hope that Daramad will increase its audience's interest in Persian culture.

The next Composer Spotlight of our upcoming collaborative concert with Front Porch features a new work by MCI composer Isaac Mayhew. Each of the five composers who will be featured in this event were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. Mayhew's piece Elegy for Uncommon Ground addresses the presence of climate change and its impact in the state of Minnesota:

Describe your inspiration for composing the piece.
The idea for that piece is to capture the experience of living through climate change on an everyday level. I live in Minnesota, in the center of the continent, where I'm not faced with the tangible effects on a day-to-day basis in the way that people elsewhere are. This is not to say that there aren't very real consequences to be felt. However, since we are talking about such a macro-concept, it can be hard to feel on a daily level - except for on social media, where there is still a raging debate about it.

What is the overall conception for the piece (for example, is it programmatic or abstract? Is there a specific formal structure, color, or musical device you employed?)
I was reading an online article about the ways in which my home state will feel the effects of climate change over the next thirty years, when I discovered the comments section. For this piece, each movement title is a Facebook comment, and within each movement, I tried to capture the both the tone and feeling behind the comment itself as well as my own experience of reading it.

What are some of the goals you strove to accomplish in writing the work?
​I wanted to capture the frustration of having a debate over widely greed upon facts and realities. I also wanted to mock the willful ignorance of climate change deniers.

What are some of the challenges you faced in writing the work?
​As I was writing the piece I found myself incorporating a lot of seemingly unrelated musical elements, and was having a hard time making them fit together. In the end, I decided to leave the piece a little rough around the edges because I think that gives it character and also works as an analogy for the chaos of our social media feeds.

Is there anything specific about your piece you'd like your audience to look out for?
​The second movement has some interesting things to listen for. I wanted to poke fun at the sort of "Baby Boomer Nostalgia" that I see as a major impediment to taking real action on climate change. The two main themes in this movement appear in the following places:

• Beginning to Letter A (pulled from the song La Bamba by Los Lobos)
• Letter B to Letter C (no quote in particular, but it supposed to sound like the music from Grease)

Both of these strike me as really nostalgic "Baby Boomer" music. Both sections are in 7/8 so that while the melodic and harmonic material make it really tempting to just sit back in the groove, the rhythmic framework repeatedly upsets that. The two themes are also interrupted by more serious, moody material. This is meant to portray the nostalgia that I was just describing as a way of avoiding the darker truth about what is really happening to the planet. From D to the end, the idea is that the moody "in-between" material takes over and is developed to its natural conclusion.

What do you hope your audience ultimately take away the most from hearing your work?
I would hope that listeners would be able to laugh at the humor in the piece but also make connections between the piece and their own lives. Despite this being about climate change specifically happening in Minnesota, this is a greater issue happening globally.

For you, as a composer, what has been the most beneficial and rewarding part of your collaborative process with Front Porch?
Front Porch is an exciting and upcoming music ensemble and it is an honor to have the opportunity to write for them. They have a very unique instrumentation that presents many possibilities. 

---UPDATED DECEMBER 28, 2020 W/ VIDEO TRANSCRIPT---
​
​We are excited to begin sharing with you the Composer Spotlights for our collaborative concert with Front Porch! This event will be taking place on December 11, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and will feature world premieres of new music written by 5 of our MCI composers.

For this concert, each of the composers were asked to create a piece of music reflecting environmental issues within their respective local areas. MCI composer Conner Leigh Shaw's piece B00m and Bust addresses the issue of fracking at the height of the oil and gas industry within his home state of Colorado.

​Learn more about Conner's new piece below:

Hi! My name is Conner Leigh Shaw; I'm a composer from Greeley, Colorado, and I currently reside in Los Angeles, California. I'm here today to talk about my collaboration with the Front Porch ensemble - they are currently working on a piece I wrote entitled B00m and Bust.

B00m and Bust is inspired by a number of things that I have both perceived growing up in Colorado, and that continue to be relevant to people living in Colorado, with regard to our environment and our energy future. My inspirations for the piece first started with my memory of my high school graduation having a backdrop of an oil fracking well. Something as important in a young student's life, as a graduation had this backdrop of fracking, which unfortunately in many cases of it showing to cause health issues in communities as well as a non-sustainable resource. My other inspirations for this piece are historical, and, in my program notes, I note that the oil and gas boom in Colorado (and the economy it's generated) is nothing new. There have been many different eras of generational, or temporal, economies in Colorado, including the first non-Native American settlers who were often silver and gold miners that were headed west in the [California] Gold Rush, and then, during the 20th century, radioactive materials were sought after in Colorado (and also stored in Colorado) during the Cold War. And, there seems to be these recurring cycles of "boom-and-bust" economies - hence, the title of my piece.

​The piece, overall, is extremely programmatic. I guess the most programmatic element of this is - in the piece - I ask the ensemble, at the end, to (through their instruments and their sound); I ask them to create the sound of a low jack-pump, which is a device that extracts oil. I ask them to relay the sound of this jack-pump as if it's the last, lone jack-pump left in the state and nothing else exists there, which is essentially - definitely - a possible scenario in the future, considering the way the environment is going. This idea of environmental immediacy also had a strong connection to the concept of the piece. Throughout the piece, there is a theme that is in a bluegrass style that every time it recurs - like in a rondo; every time the theme recurs - it becomes more and more frantic, and more and more chaotic things happen, and so this idea of cycles speeding up and events speeding up and becoming more disastrous is key and essential to the piece.

​However, I sought to contrast this with the potential for us to change our environmental and energy future. Contrasted with the more frightening sections of the piece - including the end of the piece being somewhat apocalyptic - there are moments of hope that bleed through, and those moments are the potential for people in Colorado, as well as throughout the world, to revolutionize the kind of energy we are consuming, and also to ensure that what we are doing here on Earth is not "boom-and-bust" and that everything we do on Earth can be sustained.

Along those lines, I would say that, in part, some of the piece - because of its explicitly programmatic and somewhat political leanings - the piece is definitely an example fitting in with the rest of the four Front Porch collaborative concert [pieces] that they will be doing. The piece is intended, in some way, to be somewhat a piece of activism, and also to grow people's awareness.

The piece itself uses certain elements that are supposed to help the audience be a bit more aware of what's going on, so - for instance - this idea that (during my research for this piece, the idea I found that) there were over 20,000 oil wells in Colorado in 2017, just in the county I lived in alone, factored heavily in this, and so I was doing things in the piece where I was taking the number of oil wells; I was turning those into musical notes based on the [foured] system (taking notes 1-12 and assigning those chromatic pitches). I was also doing things where the words "oil" and "gas," the letters themselves, were translated into notes. So, the idea of oil and gas, and the number of wells in Colorado in the county I lived in, were both included in the piece.

This was challenging, too - to try and find something that an audience would want to be entertained by, but also have a piece of activism - and so those elements were very difficult to try to coalesce into one piece. But, the important thing is that - what I felt was most important was that - there were at least some sections of the piece that were hopeful.

For me, as a composer, I was extremely interested in this opportunity to create a piece based on environmental issues, since it weighs so heavily on me and my daily life, especially being in this generation of millenials that is extremely worried about our future. In a way, the most rewarding thing for me about composing this piece was that I was able to express some of my issues and anguish in my own community and kind of externalize them in a way that was both entertaining, but also a piece of activism that I had not necessarily done with music before. I actually continue to hope to do this kind of writing in the future that brings awareness to certain subjects in a tasteful and entertaining, but also meaningful, way. I really appreciate the opportunity from Front Porch ensemble, and I hope you all enjoy my piece B00m and Bust.

​Thank you.

We are excited to share with you the recordings from our recent collaborative concert with the Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra! This event featured the premieres of new music written by four of our MCI composers - Janay Maisano, Chris Evan Hass, Kevin Day, and Josh Trentadue. The Holland Concert Jazz Orchestra was co-founded by another of our MCI composers, Jordan VanHemert, in 2018. From their website, this ensemble was formed "to increase access to quality jazz performances and jazz education experiences across the lakeshore [Michigan] area."

​Check out the recordings below!

VIDEOS:

Janay Maisano, "Birdy Banter" (2019)

Chris Evan Hass, "Scatterbrain" (2019)

Kevin Day, "Windy City" (2017/rev. 2019)

Josh Trentadue, "Four Ethereal Planes" (2019)

AUDIO ONLY: